Asthma and COPD Research Group

The Research Challenge:

Airway diseases, including Asthma and COPD, are variable in in their presentation, severity and response to treatment. This variability, also called “heterogeneity”, reflects different underlying molecular pathways of disease and their interaction with the environment. Unfortunately, a one-size -fits-all paradigm is often used to manage these patients, which does not account for the heterogeneity of these airway diseases at the clinical and molecular levels. This can be because the pathways are not fully understood or because there is no clear-cut test or “biomarker” to identify which disease pathway is causing the symptoms.

What we are doing:

The asthma and COPD research group investigate the molecular pathways that drive disease severity. Our research is focused on understanding the mechanisms that contribute to heterogeneity in clinical phenotypes and in response to treatment in asthma and COPD. Our research aims are to bridge the gap between clinical and molecular phenotypes and from this advance precision medicine. Taking a translational approach to meet these challenges, we perform epidemiologic research, bench studies and clinical trials to identify and understand different phenotypes of asthma and COPD, develop biomarkers and investigate the response of populations stratified by biomarkers to treatments targeted at specific molecular pathways.